


Paradox Interval

by Saerzion



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Androids, Cryogenics, Drama, Gen, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-05 06:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4169583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saerzion/pseuds/Saerzion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two centuries after the Great War, the Sole Survivor of Vault 111 wakes from cryostasis to find himself confronted by a cryptic stranger and a series of revelations. When the atrocities of the past come to light, he must choose whether to walk away or reclaim his fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

** Conundrum **

“I don’t know about this, Jay. Virtual counseling? Days spent inside a cramped pod?” Nora asked, her brow puckered in consternation as she held their fussing infant son. “It just seems bizarre.”

He gave his wife a smile that he hoped looked reassuring as he peeled off his jumpsuit. Sounds of chatter reverberated throughout the large chamber as the other Vault 111 families prepared for the same procedure. He heard similar verbal concerns from the dressing areas sectioned off on either side of him, but he pushed them out of his mind, just wanting to get the whole thing over with. The cool air hit his skin as soon as he stepped out of the jumpsuit and stripped off his undershirt. He ran his fingers through the short tendrils of his dark brown hair before setting his clothing on the chair nearby.

“I have my doubts on how well it’ll work, but there’s no harm in trying, hon,” he remarked, leaving his boxers on as he rubbed his hands together to ward off the chilly temperature.

“But you and I don’t even have any traumatic combat memories to work through,” Nora protested. “Why did the Overseer make it mandatory to subject all former servicemembers to this? And don’t you think it’s odd that all the adult residents here happen to be military veterans?”

Jay sighed and took Shaun from her arms. “Well, almost everyone in our district has served in the Armed Forces, so it’s not such a strange notion.” Reaching out to brush his knuckles over her cheek in an affectionate gesture, he said, “Now get undressed, Corporal. The sooner we go in, the sooner we can come out.”

“Fine,” she grumbled, frowning while unzipping her jumpsuit. “And for the record, I really don’t like the idea of leaving our son in the care of Vault-Tec personnel. Especially in that horrible metal-walled nursery.”

“I’m sure we can file a complaint next week about the Vault’s interior design,” Jay quipped, holding the baby close and kissing him on the head when Shaun let out an agitated cry. “I know what you mean, though. I don’t want to leave our boy, either.”

Small hands grabbed at his face, and he caught one lightly between his teeth and nibbled, getting as much father-son playtime in as he could before the long cyber therapy session. Nora stripped down to her undergarments and tossed her clothes on top of his, her expression still troubled as she smoothed the waves of her mid-length brunette hair. He could understand her reservations, and in truth, he shared them as well. Two weeks in the Vault hadn’t given them enough time to acclimate to the strict rules and regulations. Had he known about Vault 111’s required procedures that separated parents from their children, he might have signed up for a different Vault in the Boston area.

At that moment, a knock sounded on the wooden partition next to their dressing curtain. “Kramer? You decent?” a male voice called.

Nora yelped and leaped for her discarded jumpsuit, wrapping it over herself.

Jay chuckled. “No, but it’s not like you haven’t seen any of this before.”

He endured his wife’s peeved glare as the curtain parted to reveal a burly man also wearing only his boxers. The visitor peeked behind him as if to make sure no one had noticed his entrance, and then marched forward. A silver chain holding a set of dog tags and two gold rings dangled from around his neck. His buzz cut lent him a severe and imposing appearance even as he grinned at Jay.

“Kramer.”

“Harkness.”

Then, to the perturbed woman trying to cover herself with her jumpsuit, he said in a curt tone, “Nora.”

“Hello, Aaron,” she returned flatly.

Jay clapped his free hand on the shorter man’s back. “You ready for this foray into cyber psychology, bud?”

Harkness snorted and lifted a finger to tickle Shaun’s chin, inciting a delighted laugh from the baby. “Real psychologists couldn’t fix all the post-traumatic stuff in my head. I got no reason to think this’ll be any different.”

Jay nodded as he recognized the permanent haunted quality in his friend’s eyes. “I hear you. I should’ve been there at Anchorage with you, brother.”

“Nah. Better that only one of us had to go through it,” Harkness told him. “Besides, getting patched up afterwards wasn’t that bad. Got to meet a pretty Armed Forces medic, so…”

Nora lowered her gaze when he glanced in her direction.

“Well, anyway, just thought I’d stop by and see how you were taking this big wank show of Vault-Tec machinery,” Harkness continued, shaking his head as he absently fiddled with his dog tags. “Pointless as hell, if you ask me. They should’ve just given us vets twenty-four hour access to the bar if they wanted us to cope with our memories from the service.”

“Trust me, we feel the same way.” Jay exhaled and rested Shaun’s face against his shoulder. “Not much we can do about it, though. We can’t exactly march out of the Vault in protest. I figure it’s best to just humor the Overseer and hope he finds a better use for these simulators if the counseling really does fail.”

“Which it will,” Harkness insisted just as an announcement over the PA system rang throughout the chamber.

_“Attention, Vault 111 citizens. Those participating in the virtual counseling session should please make your way to your assigned pods at this time and stand by for further instructions.”_

Harkness scowled. “Great. Into the science ovens, then.” He peered at the two pods situated side by side behind Jay. “Hey, you’ve got two of ‘em over here? I’ve only got one in my section.”

“They’re grouped by family units,” Nora declared, her voice sounding strained. “Each family’s pods are next to each other.”

Jay prepared to intervene when Harkness sent her a sharp look, but no verbal spat occurred this time as Harkness’s expression tightened to mask his recurring pain.

“Oh. Guess that makes sense,” he remarked, rubbing the back of his neck. Then, giving Jay a light parting jab in the ribs, he made his exit. “Well, see you guys on the other side. I’m going through this thing solo. But hey, at least there’s no baggage, right?”

Both Jay and Nora stared after him as the atmosphere grew heavy.

“No baggage, he says. We’ve been divorced for five years, but he’s still holding a grudge,” she muttered once he left, returning her jumpsuit to the chair. “You’d think he would’ve been over it by now.”

“There’s no getting over it when your ex-wife goes on to marry and start a family with your best friend from boot camp,” Jay pointed out, completely a neutral party in the matter. “He’s been a good sport about everything, hon. For the most part, anyway. And it’s not your fault that you weren’t meant to be ‘the one’ for him, either.”

Nora crossed her arms, still gazing at the curtain. “If only this virtual counseling could help him where I couldn’t.”

“Slim as it is, there’s always a chance.”

They left it at that when another announcement blared from the overhead speakers. The Overseer’s assistants began making their rounds, and Nora stepped over to take Shaun from Jay, her face crumpling as she clutched the baby in a tight hug. A palpable feeling of desperation tinged the air in that instant. Jay tried to soothe his wife and child as the buzz of cross voices around them indicated that the other families shared the sentiment.

“Sergeant Jason Kramer and Corporal Nora Kramer?” someone asked from the other side of the curtain before pushing it aside.

Nora tensed under Jay’s hands as an elderly female Vault-Tec scientist strode in.

“It’s time to commence the session,” she told them, the wrinkles around her eyes creasing as she sent them a pleasant smile. “Please say a quick good bye to your baby and give him here.”

Nora only tightened her hold around Shaun, who seemed to pick up on her anxiety and began to wail. “Could we have a few more minutes with him?”

“I’m afraid not, ma’am. We’re on a very precise schedule. You understand.”

“But—”

“We’ll see him again soon,” Jay murmured to her, leaning down to press his cheek against Shaun’s, his heart secretly wrenching as much as hers.

Nora whimpered and cradled the baby against her. “This is the most difficult thing anyone can ask of me,” she moaned before raining kisses on their son. “Mommy and Daddy love you very much, Shaun. We’ll be back as soon as we can, darling.”

He bawled in a high pitch that instigated shrill cries from other upset babies across the chamber. Jay had to fight to keep his own arms down, in danger of snatching Shaun himself and refusing to part with him.

After a few more seconds, Nora’s entire frame shook with reluctance as she held the crying baby out to the scientist. “Please take good care of him. He means the world to us.”

“Don’t you worry about that. He’ll be in the hands of our best childcare personnel,” the older woman stated as she cooed at him.

And just like that, she swept him away and out of sight.

Nora sniffled and wiped her eyes while Jay embraced her. As a couple, they had weathered through worse together, but as parents, nothing was harder than entrusting their child to a group of strangers. They drew strength and comfort from each other for a few stolen moments, waiting until the very last second to separate and make their way over to the pods. 

The daunting metal structures loomed over them, steely and cold in the glow of the blue and orange lighting. Jay studied the construction of his assigned pod, taking in the numerous sets of wires and sensory nodes meant to attach to the skin. A breathing apparatus hung from the top, designed to fit over the wearer’s nose and mouth. Each pod provided ample space for a human adult, but offered no sort of cushioning even though it required participants to stand during the entire procedure.

“This makes me nervous, Jay,” Nora whispered, her worried green eyes locked onto the gaping maw of her pod.

He went to her and cupped her cheeks, kissing her long and hard as the command to enter the pods blared from the PA system. “Don’t worry,” he assured her once he broke away, “I’ll be here right next to you for the whole thing.”

She forced a small smile and nodded.

They took their positions and climbed the steps leading inside. The rough metal dug into his bare feet as he turned and aligned himself with the flashing indicators above the mouth of the opening. A humming noise started behind him, signaling the various functions powering up. Without warning, the wires and nodes shot out and latched onto different parts of his body. He jolted as they adhered to his skin, and he would have leaned out to see how Nora fared, but a translucent blue force field beamed into place at the opening, locking him in.

The breathing mask lowered and automatically moved toward him. He held himself still as it settled over the lower half of his face and fastened itself with a click. A steady stream of oxygen flowed into his nostrils just as a slight rumbling spread over the floor. He watched through the force field as the pod rotated clockwise one hundred eighty degrees, blinking as he found himself facing the opposite pods across the chamber. His gaze roved over the other residents, imagining that his own countenance mirrored the unease in theirs.

Then, before he could send up a prayer for Nora and Shaun, a potent sleeping agent entered his system through the breathing mask. The nodes on his arms and legs emitted some sort of muscle stimulator that kept him upright while his eyelids grew heavy. And as he cast a final look over the darkening chambers, the image of his family burned into his memory right when the last vestiges of his consciousness slipped away.

x-x-x-x-x

He woke to the call of the hollow night.

  
  
_(Art by[Orifiel](http://orifiel-m.deviantart.com/art/Fallout-Sole-Survivor-of-Vault-111-540129789))_  


His lungs inflated as he gasped for air, the breathing apparatus over his mouth stifling, no longer functioning. He staggered back, all sense of balance compromised, and hit the jagged edges of the pod’s interior. A ringing sound plagued his ears as he struggled to right himself, residual zaps of energy flowing through him from the nodes. Hues of blue and orange danced across his blurry vision, and he grasped around for leverage, his knees weakening when some of the wires around his legs snapped.

The cold temperature added to the challenge of regaining his motor skills. His mind reeled as he found a stable angle on which to lean, and he waited as his senses slowly refocused, the thundering of his heart growing louder with each passing second. A sharp feeling of dread cut through the disorientation and gripped his stomach. It wrapped around him, constricting, smothering. With trembling fingers, he pried the breathing apparatus from his face.

Once full sensation returned to his fingertips and toes, he pushed himself up from the back of the pod and stood on his own. A short bout of vertigo struck, but then dissipated. He seized the remaining wires still attached to him and yanked them off, nodes and all. They swung away to the sides as he reached for his boxers sitting low on his hips and pulled them back up. The loose waistband indicated a degree of weight loss, and he frowned down at his skinnier physique as his vision adjusted to the dim lighting.

_What’s going on? How long was I out? This isn’t the result of a few days in virtual counseling…_

Jay froze.

_Counseling._

He recalled no memory of any therapeutic session, virtual or otherwise. The last thing he remembered was the sleeping gas putting him under. In the time he had been out, he received none of the promised psychological treatment. The apprehension already pressing into him thickened at once. Something was off. Something had gone wrong. He felt it in every bone of his body.

He tasted it in the death in the air.

Jay wrestled with the panic threatening to overtake him. He lurched forward, only to bang into the intact force field still blocking his exit. His eyes swung to the LED-lit interface to the right, and he mashed all the buttons in a random sequence, hoping that one of them managed to deactivate the field.

“Stop.”

His head snapped to the floor outside, and he spotted a trench coat-clad male figure waving to capture his attention.

“Don’t push anything else. I’ll try to shut it down from out here,” the man declared, voice filtered to a flanging pitch through his own breathing mask. The brim of a fedora hat shielded his face from view.

Jay’s eyebrows drew together, but he complied. Peering through the force field, he watched the stranger approach a control panel in the center of the chamber. The blue patterns of the field made it difficult to get a clear view of the premises, but the dark interior boded ill for the status of the Vault. His chest clenched as he thought of Nora and Shaun, and he tried to tell the man to hurry, only for the words to rasp through his dry throat.

Finally, after an excruciating span of minutes, the force field wavered and then dissolved. Jay staggered out on clumsy legs, almost stumbling down the set of stairs. He gripped the railing for support and glanced toward Nora’s pod, which stood open, empty, and derelict. Fear coursed through him as he dragged himself over to it, gazing in shock at its state of disrepair.

“Nora,” he croaked right before his legs gave out. The dusty floor greeted him as he fell to his knees. _What is happening? Where’s my family?_

“Jay,” the stranger said, walking over to him. “Are you lucid? Do you know who you are?”

Jay gaped up at the other man. Swallowing a few times, he nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Considering everything, that’s remarkable.”

“W-what… happened here…?” Jay trailed off when his line of sight swept over the chamber, taking it all in full.

Random trash and research objects littered the ground, which sported deep fissures that ran through the once-pristine linoleum. The few light sources flickered in weak intervals at scattered points along the perimeter, and the eerie hush told him of some unknown disaster that had befallen the place. Every piece of equipment appeared rundown and damaged. Most of the pods seemed long vacated, but to his horror, others displayed the sprawled skeletons of the residents once housed inside.

He scrambled back to his feet even as his legs threatened to collapse from under him again. “Another nuclear strike?” he asked hoarsely. “But the Vault should have withstood—”

“No. That isn’t it,” the stranger interjected. Features still hidden in shadow, he stepped closer. “I’ll bring you up to speed on the events that occurred here, but you’ll have to brace yourself.”

Jay motioned to Nora’s empty pod. “I have to find my wife. My son. And my friend. God, please let them be all right…”

“You won’t find them,” the other man told him. “I will explain. Just try to stay calm and listen.”

“I—” Jay cut himself off and took a deep breath. “I’m listening.”

“Do you know what year it is?”

“2077.”

“Not anymore. It’s been about two hundred years since then.”

An interlude of silence followed.

Jay stared at him as the information refused to register. “Excuse me?”

“You have been in cryostasis for two centuries, Mr. Kramer. You’re the last one here. The Sole Survivor of Vault 111.”

Disbelief must have spread across Jay’s expression because the stranger gestured around them with one gloved hand.

“Look around you. How else can you explain the devastation in here? The skeletons, already past the decomposition stage? The rest of the Vault is the same. This is what an abandoned facility looks like after two hundred years.”

“But…” Jay surveyed the chamber, still unable to come to terms with the revelation. “I couldn’t have been out for that long. Where did everyone else go?”

“That part I don’t know,” the other man replied.

Jay shook his head, grief and anger rising to the back of his throat. “No. This is absurd. Cryostasis? What are you talking about?”

“The so-called ‘virtual counseling’ your Overseer had forced you and your fellow residents to undergo was a front for a massive cryonic experiment,” the stranger stated. “If I have my facts right, the purpose was to extract the memories of military veterans and install them into memory chips. These chips were then distributed to other select Vaults, and later to the Institute.”

“Institute?” Jay repeated, swiping a palm over his forehead as another dizzy spell hit him.

“You might remember it as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

He knew of MIT, but that did little to quell the confusion and discord in his mind. “This is all making less and less sense. Cryonics can’t be right. The Vault was supposed to be our home.”

But when he scanned the chamber again, he could almost detect the veiled malice lingering around the site. The truth lurked in the corners, in the forgotten remains of the individuals he’d once lived with. This place bled misfortune. The Vault had sealed their fates.

_Jesus… what have they done to us?_

The stranger adjusted the collar of his trench coat. “I’m sorry. Vault-Tec had more insidious plans than what they advertised on the surface. I don’t know much else about how they operated here. Your Vault was one of the ones most shrouded in secrecy.”

“How could they do this?”

“Evidently, the memory chips were crucial to Vault-Tec’s goals. I couldn’t say why; that information is lost to time.” Black boots trod over the floor from beneath worn slacks as the other man paced in front of him. “Most of the chips have been scavenged by independent groups over the years, though. There’s no way to keep track of all of them. Yours happened to still be here in the Commonwealth. It’s the reason I even discovered the possibility that you might still be in this Vault, alive.”

Jay scowled at him, suspicion clouding everything else. “Who _are_ you, anyway?”

The fedora tilted, and a pair of glowing orange eyes stared back at him through the darkness. “My designation is A3-20. I’m a self-aware android originally from the Institute.”

“Android?” Jay grimaced as a migraine throbbed to life between his temples. “You’re telling me you’re artificial intelligence? You don’t seem like it.”

“Some of us go through self-determination and transcend our programming. Humans tend to see that as a danger,” A3-20 remarked. “We become fugitives and require extensive physical alterations to stay in hiding. I’m on the run from the same androids I used to work with at the Synth Retention Bureau.”

“Does that have anything to do with me?”

“Well, you may be interested to know that my old SRB partner, A3-21, managed to escape all the way to the Capital Wasteland. He underwent a complete identity swap from a skilled surgeon, and the memory chip he received belonged to a man named Aaron Harkness.” He paused to allow that to sink in. When Jay gawked at him in alarm, he nodded and continued, “Right. He took on your best friend’s identity. He now goes by ‘Harkness’ and genuinely believes that’s who he’s always been.”

Jay stiffened, his hands curling into fists at his sides. “He is _not_ Aaron Harkness,” he growled through clenched teeth.

“No, he isn’t, but that’s how powerful these memory chips are if they’re used to replace an android’s memories,” A3-20 told him, seemingly unfazed by his rising ire.

If the utter verity of the situation hadn’t been so clear, Jay might have thought he was still in the middle of the pod simulation.

“How do you even know all this?” he demanded when the android remained quiet for a long duration of minutes. “If what you say is true, and I’ve been here for two damn centuries, how did you know to come find me?”

A3-20 inclined his head. “The memory chips generally have an end point that signifies the conclusion of the extraction process in these pods. Whether that meant the subject died or was released remains uncertain. Yours, however, has no end point. Which means your pod had never powered down.”

Jay retreated a few paces when the other man closed the distance between them.

“After I gained self-determination, I chose to retain my own memories, but opted to have facial reconstruction and a memory chip implanted just in case,” A3-20 said, reaching up to remove his hat and breathing mask. “The thing is…”

In the low lighting, a familiar visage appeared. The orange retinas faded to striking blue eyes, right above a nose broken one too many times. Dark stubble surrounded a set of thin lips, and a broad jawline defined the entire face. Jay balked at the sight of the android’s revealed features.

It was like looking into a mirror.

“The memory chip, appearance, and identity I received were yours, Jay Kramer.”


	2. Chapter 2

** Volition **

Jay tried to steady the shaking in his hands as he zipped up his old jumpsuit. The material clung to his body in a manner more restricting than he remembered, its fit representative of the trap and prison that had thrown his life into disarray. His eyes strayed to the spot across the dressing area where Nora had stood holding Shaun, and he tore his gaze away, finding the time disparity too agonizing to mull over. He wobbled a little as he bent down to lace his boots, the tight feeling beneath his sternum winding to a tangible ache.

Everything had lost all sense of logic and feasibility. A dozen speculations ran through his thoughts, each one eventually merging together to coincide with the explanation already given to him. He frowned as he stood back up, still unable to process it all in full. He had woken, intact, from an extended period of suspended animation, only to learn that a number of lifetimes had passed. The clock had continued without him.

The world had left him behind.

Jay gathered himself after a few minutes and wandered back to the center of the chamber, where his synthetic double awaited. He eyed the android warily, unsettled by the near-perfect resemblance to himself. A3-20 lacked the details of his facial scars, but everything else, down to the pattern of stubble growth, matched the real thing. Jay found it impossible to stand still while the restlessness grew in his limbs, and he resorted to pacing back and forth before walking a circle around the other man.

“Holding up any better?” A3-20 inquired.

“No. I’m not. How is this possible?” Jay snapped, agitated, as he examined the android’s posture and physique, so similar to his own. “You’re talking to me with my own _face_. What the hell…”

A3-20 replaced his hat, but left the breathing mask off. “Remember that what you’re looking at is artificial. You will always be the real Jason Kramer, an organic human, composed of flesh and blood. I borrowed your form out of necessity. If it helps any, I never _became_ you.”

Jay scowled and came to a halt in front of him. “I don’t even know how I’m supposed to react. To any of this. I’ve been displaced on the timeline, I have no idea what happened to my family, and now I’m talking to a machine that’s wearing my skin. _Nothing_ is going to help me wrap my head around this. Vault-Tec needs to answer for what they’ve done here.”

“I can imagine the turmoil you must be feeling,” A3-20 started, lifting his hands in a placating gesture. “But this is reality, Jay. Vault-Tec has been long defunct, so if you’re entertaining notions of revenge, I’m afraid you won’t be getting it in the traditional sense. What you can do from here on out is move forward.”

Jay scoffed, a bitter sound of misery and hopelessness. “Move forward to what? If everything you’ve told me is true, then everyone I know is long gone. And why would a post-nuclear android have all this knowledge of Vault-Tec through the centuries, anyway?”

A3-20 lowered his arms and idly secured his breathing mask onto his belt. “I mentioned I’m from the Institute. They keep a database of Vault-Tec’s societal preservation program and all the Vault experiments across the country. The information is incomplete, obviously, but I downloaded enough data to learn of Vault 111’s inner workings.”

“So what was the point of waking me up?”

A3-20 fixed him with an intense stare. “You’re the last fully functional human on Earth who lived during the pre-War era. Not only that, you’re a veteran of the old world Armed Forces.” He shifted, seeming to calculate his next words. “I sought you out and woke you up because I, and many others, need your help.”

Jay folded his arms over his chest, sending the android a skeptical look. “You need help from an archaic man frozen through time who has no bearing on the world today? What could I possibly have to offer you?”

“The past.”

A stilted hush stretched between them. Jay regarded him in bewilderment, waiting for an elaboration. A3-20 only nodded toward the exit of the chamber.

“I’d like for you to come with me.”

“I have my reservations about that.”

“Look, I don’t expect your trust while you’re still taking this all in, but just know that I mean you no harm,” A3-20 told Jay. “I can assist you in navigating the world outside. The surface is nothing like you remember. Unless you plan to live out the rest of your days with the ghosts in this place, I highly recommend you accompany me out of here.”

Jay grimaced as he surveyed the premises again. The walls echoed with silent mayhem, a residual foreboding atmosphere born from the history of Vault-Tec’s sinister project. He sensed the fear and despair, the tragedy of the bones that lined the ground. Why Vault-Tec had goals that resulted in this, and why he had been the one to come out of it alive, he couldn’t fathom. Another glance at Nora’s empty pod told him he had nothing left here. Still, he continued to hesitate, not quite taking A3-20’s statements at face value.

“Your… data pool doesn’t have anything on what happened to my wife and son?” he asked the android.

“Like I said, the Vault 111 info I downloaded was incomplete. Sorry.”

“What about Harkness?”

A3-20 stiffened, and then tossed his head toward the far sections across the chamber. “See for yourself.”

Jay’s blood ran cold as he eyed the other man’s grim expression. On leaden legs, he made his way down the rows of pods, squinting through the dimness at the right side. His stomach wound itself into knots while everything else in his working memory dissipated. He heard A3-20 trailing along behind him, and as the lighting around them continued to flicker, he caught sight of the skeleton slumped over the base of the pod that had belonged to Harkness.

_No…_

His denial ebbed as quickly as it had come when he noted the correct proportions of the bone structure. A wave of emotion threatened to overwhelm him, and he pushed it back as he approached the skeletal remains of his best friend and brother in arms. But when he spotted the dog tags with two rings—Nora’s first wedding ring and Jay’s class ring—still hanging from the chain around the skeleton’s neck, he choked on a sob and crouched down, reaching out to touch the mementos.

_Goddammit. You, more than anyone, should’ve had the chance to live your life out there, Harkness. You were always on the outside looking in, stuck around us even when it must’ve hurt. I’m sorry this happened. None of this was fair. I’ll see you on the other side, brother._

The empty eye sockets only stared back at him, and he took a few moments to mourn, gripping the dog tags and rings in his palm as he hunched his quivering shoulders over Harkness’s skeleton. The impact of the situation hit him twice over in that instant. He grieved for his friend, for everyone who had fallen victim here. He knew whom to blame, but if retribution was impossible, the burning need for justice would eat him up inside.

The rustle of fabric sounded from behind him, and he wiped his eyes just as a grimy white sheet dangled over his head.

“I’m sorry,” A3-20 said quietly. “Lay him to rest, but don’t hold onto the anger. It’s a poisonous emotion, and one you’re not equipped to sustain, Jay. It’ll only tear you apart in the long run.”

“What would you know about human emotions?” Jay snarled, glowering. “You might have an illicit copy of my memories, but you couldn’t possibly understand how it feels to be in my position right now.”

“I don’t need to tap into your memories to know that humans destroy themselves, over and over, when they’re resentful and furious. You want reprisal against Vault-Tec? You already have it,” A3-20 returned, hovering over him. “You beat the odds. You outlived them. You survived an experiment that lasted for two hundred years. Now you have a chance to start over. I’m not saying you have to move on and forget, but don’t waste it.”

“You’re only saying this shit because you need me for something.”

“I’m saying this shit because if you don’t hear it, you’ll give up and take yourself out. Then Vault-Tec will have won. Is that what you want?”

“My _family_ is—”

“Gone. I know,” A3-20 cut in, the inflection of his voice going sharp. “Nothing you do will bring them back. Bereave them, miss them, but don’t join them. Not right now. Fate chose you to survive for a reason. Think about that before you let the rage fester into hatred.”

Jay bristled, but refrained from further argument when exhaustion took over. The searing ire in his veins receded, and he clasped the dog tags tighter, feeling drained. He let out a shuddering breath as he lowered his forehead to his other hand. To him, only a night of sleep had passed since he’d last seen Harkness alive and well. Now, he found himself confronting a full set of bones. It was disconcerting. Shattering.

Maddening.

Another round of silence descended over them. His fingers brushed over Harkness’s engraved information on the steel dog tags. After a few more beats of deliberation, he carefully lifted the skull so he could remove the chain and place it around his own neck. Then, without saying anything, he accepted the sheet A3-20 still held out and rose to drape it over Harkness.

“Rest soundly, brother. No more suffering. No more pain. You’re free,” he murmured, stepping back. “I’ll hold onto these tags for you and come back when I can to give you a proper burial. I promise.”

He grappled with himself, trying to decide on the next course of action. The options balanced on a fragile scale, and it took everything he had to focus on reason while he contemplated. A weary sigh escaped his lips as he rotated to address the android. However, when his gaze caught onto a reclining skeleton wearing a lab coat farther across the floor, he marched toward it.

The Vault-Tec uniform incited coils of wrath in his midsection, and he stopped in front of it, hands opening and closing into fists as the urge to crush its skull gnawed at him. Before he could give in, he spotted a small blinking light from the device on its arm. Bending down, he swiped up the Pip-Boy and studied its design, scrolling through the interface until he deemed it worth taking. A3-20 came to stand next to him as he latched it onto his wrist.

“Fine,” Jay declared, something inside hardening from the stitched-up fragments of his broken heart. “You’re right, I might as well keep going. Let’s get out of here.”

x-x-x-x-x

The unfiltered sunlight nearly blinded him when he climbed out of the Vault entrance. He squeezed his eyes shut and allowed A3-20 to guide him over the mouth of the exterior door. An unfamiliar smell permeated the air, assaulting his nostrils as he willed his senses to adjust to the open Wastes. A warm breeze blew against him and ruffled his hair, and he blinked a few times until his retinas adapted to the afternoon brightness.

A desolate land met his stare when he peered around them. Two centuries had passed since he and his family had evacuated their home, but to his sense of time, it had only been weeks since he’d last seen greenery and civilization. Now only dead foliage, ruined structures, and demolished neighborhoods greeted him from the distance. He stood paralyzed on the spot, mouth agape, a plethora of new lamentations rising to circulate through his head.

“How do people live out here?” he surmised aloud, noting the relative quiet of their surroundings as the remnants of the Boston metropolis loomed on the horizon.

“For most individuals alive today, this is the only world they’ve known,” A3-20 replied. “The landscape is different, but so are the people. Not only humans walk around as sentient beings anymore. Some have mutated into ghouls and super mutants. This is now an armed culture, and many will kill others to thrive. You have to be prepared, Jay. Because if it’s not people trying to murder each other, it’s mutated creatures that will bring about your death.”

“And where do androids fit in all this?”

A3-20 peered at him before producing a shotgun from his trench coat and holding it out. “When we’re not used as tools, we have to fight against everyone and everything just to survive.”

Jay took the firearm and slung its strap over his shoulder. He followed the other man down the winding path to the north, biting back the rest of his questions as he struggled to take in the stark contrast between the Boston he remembered and the Boston—or Commonwealth—he witnessed now. The heat index felt warmer than it did in the past, and he soon began perspiring in his jumpsuit. Unzipping his collar, he endured the harsh rays of the sun as he scanned the lingering devastation from the Great War. Two hundred years later, and society still hadn’t managed to rebuild to its former state. Life out here appeared bleak. He wondered if he should have just crawled back into his pod and slept for another few centuries.

Their steps crunched over the uneven terrain during their trek. Jay maintained a healthy dose of suspicion about A3-20’s role in all this, and he concentrated on his distaste for his synthetic clone in order to avoid dwelling on the people he had lost. He watched the android’s movements, noticing that their similarities ended at their physical characteristics and shared memories. The android’s mannerisms and personality differed from his, which gave him an odd feeling of relief. Knowing that A3-20 wasn’t an exact copy eased some of the dissonance.

After some time, the android remarked, “If you’d like, we could pass through your old neighborhood. In case you want to scavenge for some of your belongings.”

“That’s the last thing I want to do right now,” Jay responded in a curt tone. “So where exactly are we headed?”

A3-20 pointed to the dilapidated skyline of the downtown area. “The urban cradle of post-apocalyptic America. Fewer lights, more macabre sights.”

“…Can’t wait.” Jay’s eyebrows rose when a wrecked gas station came into view, and he made out a small figure perking up from its spot on the ground when it caught sight of them. “Hey, there’s movement up ahead.”

A3-20 pulled out a pistol from its holster beneath his coat, but then returned it when they drew closer. “Just a stray dog. Looks like a purebred German shepherd, too. Now that’s rare.”

Jay tilted his head as the dog bounded excitedly toward him. “He doesn’t seem dangerous.”

“Unmutated animals usually aren’t.”

Jay dropped to a knee and reached out with one hand, which the dog ran into, tail wagging. He scratched the animal behind the ears as it sniffed him, the contact soothing and reminiscent of better years gone by. Almost at once, a bond forged between them, filling his chest with a calm sensation for the first time since his awakening.

“You can bring him along if you want,” A3-20 said, giving the dog a light pat on the head. “More company is always better out here, and he can be trained for various tasks. Plus, he reminds you of your first childhood pet, doesn’t he?”

Jay sent the android a sharp glance. “I’m never going to get used to you tapping into my memories.”

A3-20 only grinned. “Gonna name this one Dogmeat, too?”

Jay straightened and prepared to deliver a scathing rejoinder, but the dog let out a happy bark at the sound of the name. “…I guess that’s an affirmative.”

Dogmeat licked the back of Jay’s hand and panted at him, as if waiting for a command.

“All right. Let’s continue.”

They walked for nearly an hour and a half. When Jay complained of dehydration, A3-20 pulled a murky bottle of water from his coat pocket and informed him of the difficulty in acquiring the purified stuff these days. Although the other man warned him to take small sips to acclimate his digestive tract to the irradiated water, Jay’s thirst took control of his body and had him downing half the bottle in one go. Twenty minutes later, they had to stop while Jay vomited on the side of the road.

“If it’s any consolation,” A3-20 remarked over the sounds of retching and Dogmeat’s concerned whines, “I do have a stash of purified water at the place we’re going to. If we stick to the backroads and manage to avoid all hostile encounters, we should be there by dusk.”

Jay waited until his stomach had emptied itself of its contents before wiping his mouth and peering balefully at the android. “Great. I’ll try not to die before then.”

They resumed their journey along the dusty, cracked pavement, slowing their pace to accommodate Jay’s weakening stamina. A small herd of two-headed, hairless cows passed by at one point, and A3-20 identified them as wild brahmin when Jay recoiled in revulsion. His frown deepened when A3-20 went on to describe the other mutated wildlife native to the Commonwealth, the sound of deathclaws making him nervous. As someone who had grown up with pet chameleons, he found their lethal descendants nothing less than horrifying.

Eventually, the sun lowered to a less severe temperature, and Jay gawked as they neared the derelict high-rise buildings of what was once downtown Boston. Rubble lay strewn around the area, with pieces of broken buildings reformed into new shoddy structures. Once they entered downtown proper, the weather changed to a gloomy gray, and a few droplets of rain landed on him to signal a possible oncoming downpour. And for the first time since leaving the Vault, he saw people wandering around.

Jay stared at their disheveled appearances and worn, hard-bitten features. They watched him in evident wariness as he ambled through the streets with his companions. Dogmeat let out a few low growls whenever any of them sidled too close, his hackles raised as he stayed near Jay’s side. Jay noticed their hands on their weapons, which ranged from bladed baseball bats to military grade assault rifles. After enough instances of prolonged eye contact, he kept his head down. These people had been formed and shaped by the harsh Wasteland. Every single one of them had a kill count in their eyes.

A3-20 led the way to a district Jay recognized as Scollay Square. He swallowed at sight of the rundown buildings here, and his gaze roved over the tangled power lines above them, which strung lights across the main street. The week before the bombs fell, he and Nora had taken Shaun on a family stroll to the local theater a few blocks away. Now, the entire place matched the rest of the destroyed city.

A light drizzle fell over them as they took a narrow side street, which opened into a shadier section Jay had always avoided. He had never been certain whether this counted as the red light district, but the charged atmosphere and faded flyers reading, _Girls, Girls, Girls!_ cemented the notion. They approached a building nestled by the traffic intersection, a neon red sign flashing _Memory Den_ mounted above the entrance. Discarded papers stuck to the bottom of Jay’s boots while he walked, and he dragged his feet along the ground in an effort to remove them.

“It’s a damn mess out here,” he commented as he stepped on a pile of cigarette butts. “Is this what nuclear war did to humanity while I’ve been out?”

“Are you surprised?” A3-20 asked him.

“Dismayed, more like,” Jay replied, glimpsing several other people garbed in the same trench coat and fedora ensemble A3-20 wore. “Hold on. What’s with all the similar attire?”

The others regarded them in silence, gazes intent from beneath the brims of their hats. Most stood scattered around the exterior of the Memory Den building, some smoking cigarettes while others brandished pistols. Jay tensed at their penetrating attention, but Dogmeat remained placid next to him, implying that the level of threat here was minimum.

“We’re the faction that runs this sector,” A3-20 stated, nodding to his comrades. “Everyone else around here knows not to cross us.”

Jay started when he caught the brief flicker of orange retinas around them. “You’re all androids.”

“That’s right.” A3-20 marched up to the two men guarding the front entrance. They granted him access by standing aside as he beckoned to Jay. “This is a haven for those of us who are self-aware and hiding out. I probably don’t need to tell you that knowing this secret is a privilege. Come on in.”

Jay’s brow furrowed, but he ignored the surrounding stares and strode in after the other man, Dogmeat at their heels. A floral scent wafted over him as soon as he stepped inside, and although the place looked like it had seen much better days, intact chandeliers and fixtures decorated the space. He studied the area while following A3-20, taking in the silver and violet motif in the curtains, lampshades, and chaise lounge chairs.

They entered what appeared to be the central room, and among the high-class furniture sat several glass pods hooked up by wires to a terminal in one corner. The pods differed from the ones in Vault 111, looking a lot more suitable for legitimate virtual simulations. Most seemed operable, as their interface lights shone through their clear glass doors, but one situated at the opposite wall contained a misty residue that obscured its interior.

Although the room was empty of other occupants, Jay noted the lit candles, bottles of wine, and dented seat cushions that all pointed to a client-oriented type of establishment.

“Is this some kind of brothel?” he demanded bluntly.

“A host lounge, actually,” A3-20 answered, sounding a bit affronted. “Less raunchy sex, more classy conversation.”

Dogmeat went on an enthusiastic sniffing spree around the premises, and Jay lingered in the middle of the floor, shifting in discomfort as he fidgeted with the dog tags through the front of his jumpsuit.

“Interesting choice of cover,” he muttered, and then nodded to the unique pod. “What’s with that thing over there?”

A3-20’s expression grew ambivalent. “Ah.”

Jay went still when the android ambled over to it with stiff movements. A3-20 paused at its side, his composure suddenly less cool and collected. Hesitant fingers drifted to the latch on the pod, skimming over the mechanism before clicking it open.

“I’ll show you, but try not to overreact,” A3-20 murmured as the foggy door opened vertically with a soft hiss.

Curious, Jay shuffled closer when swirls of mist emitted from the pod and drifted out over the floor. He took note of A3-20 glancing away, but leaned forward to see what lay inside. As the mist dispersed and vanished, long legs came into view, followed by the hem of a stained yellow dress. Dainty hands lay clasped over the skirt, prompting a sudden vision of those same hands holding a medical gauze, a wedding bouquet, and an infant. As his gaze continued to travel upward, his breath caught in his throat. Long waves of brunette hair spilled over slender shoulders, and when the sleeping visage came into view, he jolted in astonishment.

“Nora!” Jay cried, launching himself forward. He landed in front of her seated form and grasped her hands, which felt ice cold to the touch. “Nora? Honey, are you all right? Come on, wake up.”

“Don’t, Jay,” A3-20 told him in a somber voice. “She isn’t Nora, and she won’t be waking up.”

Jay pressed his palm to her cheek, his heart sinking again at the rigid surface of her skin. “What… do you mean?”

“Her designation was G5-36. She was the android who received your wife’s memory chip and appearance, but the SRB caught and decommissioned her during a scouting mission near the Institute. We managed to rescue her body and bring her back here.”

Jay exhaled and released Nora’s android double, sitting back on his haunches, despondent. The likeness struck him as eerie, even more so than his own synthetic replica. Every detail seemed incredibly accurate, from the shapes of her nails to the smooth planes of her facial structure. She appeared to be slumbering, so lifelike in her construction, as if her eyes would open at the slightest coaxing.

He worked through the painful throb in his chest and dropped his head in his heads. “Why are you keeping her?”

A3-20 lowered the glass door to shut it again. “We were hoping to find a way to revive her, complete with her self-aware identity.”

At that moment, the dots connected.

Jay sent him a sidelong look. “That’s why you need my help? You want me to bring your dead friends back to life?” Dogmeat came to sit beside him, and he rubbed the dog’s head as he stood back up. “You have my memories, so you should know the irony here. Nora was the one who worked with artificial intelligence after she finished her enlistment in the Armed Forces. She would have been able to help you out. This is outside my field of specialty.”

“That had occurred to me, yes, but AI programming isn’t the reason I took the chance of tracking you down.”

Jay watched as A3-20 went to the desk in the corner and picked up a tan folder sitting next to the terminal.

“Androids have always been seen as equipment and servants, but now that so many of us have attained free will, we’ve been backed into a hazardous corner,” A3-20 declared, tilting up the brim of his hat as the lines around his mouth deepened. “When the Institute cracked down on runaway synths and formed the Synth Retention Bureau, androids began hunting other androids, the ones who had gone through self-determination. This place would’ve been discovered as our hideout long ago if sympathetic members of the Railroad hadn’t been helping us. But as of this moment, we’re on the brink of a rebellion.”

Jay registered the request even before A3-20 verbalized it. “You want me involved somehow.”

“Yes. You possess invaluable knowledge of pre-War technology, military strategy, and weapon and armor customization, skills shared by no other individual walking on Earth today,” the android said. “Although I have your memory chip, I can’t fully emulate your expertise. You could be the key to our success if we go to war with the Institute.”

“War?” Jay backed up, hands raising in refusal. “I’m going to have to opt out of this. I just got back on my feet, and the Wasteland is already kicking my ass. I’ve never minded AIs, but to be honest, I’m not that passionate about your cause. I appreciate you not outright killing me—since violence and murder seem to be the norm out here these days—but the Institute isn’t my problem.”

A3-20 sauntered toward him and held out the folder, countenance devoid of emotion. “This might change your mind.”

Jay peered at him cautiously as he accepted it and flipped it open. A single black and white photograph met his gaze, depicting a man standing on what looked like the ruined campus grounds of MIT. He squinted at the subject, experiencing a strong pang of familiarity he couldn’t quite place. The man stood in a professional pose, his clean-cut appearance indicative of his vocation and status. Wayfarer spectacles sat atop his nose, and through the clear lenses, his eyes gleamed with both intelligence and cunning.

“Who is this?” Jay questioned.

“Shaun Kramer,” A3-20 answered, a faint note of amusement lacing his words. “Your son.”

The folder dropped to the floor as Jay gripped the photo at the edges and brought it closer to his face. “ _What_?”

“I withheld the truth from you earlier when you asked if my data pool had any information on your family. Your wife’s fate is still unknown, but your son’s is no secret,” A3-20 remarked, unapologetic. “Records show he had been raised normally in the Vault with the other children separated from their parents. Then in 2097, when he was around twenty years old, he was the first Vault 111 inhabitant to be released into the Wasteland.”

Dogmeat rolled over Jay’s feet and panted up at him as the room began to spin. Jay forced himself to focus, belatedly identifying both his and Nora’s combined features in that of their son’s. The sight was surreal and saddening, a glimpse into a window he had been too late to witness firsthand.

“He demonstrated a knack for science and mathematics early on. Sometime in his thirties, he came upon the ruins of MIT and rebuilt it from the ground up,” A3-20 went on. “Dr. Shaun Kramer was the founder of the modern day Institute.”

“But… you’ve made the Institute sound like a corrupt organization,” Jay stammered, line of vision still glued to the photo. “My son couldn’t have—”

“Rest assured, he formed it with the best of intentions. Brilliant man, moral and just. He led the brightest minds in the Commonwealth for decades, and he developed the tech to build synths as we are today. You would have been proud, Jay. He lived a long and fulfilling life.” A3-20 sighed then and shook his head. “But after he passed away, the new leadership at the Institute warped everything your son had built and stood for. Now it’s a powerful and dangerous faction in this part of the country. Especially for androids.”

Jay finally raised his eyes from the picture, detecting the gravity that had infused the space. “What exactly are you asking of me?”

A3-20 squared his shoulders, enunciating his next statement in a deliberate, biting tone. “We need you to bring down the technological empire your son had created.”


	3. Chapter 3

** Paradox **

Jay spent the next hour seated in one of the lounge chairs, the picture in his hands, staring at the man his son had become. He took a long, hard look at Shaun’s chosen path, only now coming to terms with the legacy that echoed in the background. A seemingly predestined task weighed on his shoulders, and he considered its reversed nature, in which a father embarked on the road long-paved by the child.

This was what fate had in mind when it selected him as the Sole Survivor?

He snorted when he thought of the many futures he had imagined for his family back when the world still made sense. Simple dreams and hopes, whisked away by humanity’s compulsive urge for self-destruction. The result left him in a reality he wanted no part in, spared him to live a life he didn’t wish to lead. Out of spite, he could reject it all and arrange for an end under his own terms. Successful experiment or not, he didn’t belong here.

On the other hand, why give the bastards the satisfaction?

Vault-Tec may have escaped his vengeance firsthand, but he could ensure they spent eternity turning restlessly in their graves. Whatever reason they had for cryogenically freezing him into the future, they failed to sustain themselves long enough to witness the results. From here on out, he could do as he wished. They took something irreplaceable from him and left a gaping void, but the Earth kept on spinning, and unlike them, he still resided in it. Both gift and burden, torn asunder.

He now walked the paradoxical line.

Jay refrained from glancing up when A3-20 strode back into the room. Through conditioned reflex, he caught the bottle of clean water the android tossed at him, only then bothering to shift his eyes to the other man. A3-20 leaned against the desk in the corner and watched him, nothing presumptive or expectant in his gaze. Not bothering to speak, Jay set the picture down and opened the bottle to finally rehydrate his parched body.

“They say men of your caliber become heroes whether you want to or not,” A3-20 commented after a few moments. “It’s the alignment of your traits. You’re compelled to take on valiant deeds even when every other part of you screams against it.”

Jay gulped down the last of the water before pinning the android with a stony look. “Whatever caliber you’re holding me to because of my memories, forget it. You might have done some calculations based on what you understood of my personality, but you didn’t anticipate the divergence when I woke up from a two hundred-year sleep. It’s been less than a day since I’ve entered the Wasteland, but I’m already a different person than what you think I am.”

“Fair enough. That’s not a ‘no’ to my request, though,” A3-20 pointed out, neutral countenance unchanging.

Jay’s line of sight flickered to the picture.

“You’re curious. That in itself is abundantly clear,” the android told him. “Even if you’re not aiming for any heroic actions, you want to see the journey that led to this. You want to see traces of Shaun and his life in the present day.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to go head to head with the renovated MIT that his colleagues bastardized.”

“The Institute. Most elusive of the factions, unreachable by all others.” A3-20 peered over at G5-36 in the cloudy pod, something wistful darting across his features. “They operate from underground, but they’re everywhere, and they see everything. Might as well be the sky of the Commonwealth.”

Jay tapped the cap of the water bottle in an idle mannerism, still not persuaded enough to commit to this undertaking. “So find a real hero to fight your war against them.”

His only obligation now was to himself. He knew his own capabilities, and he comprehended the gravity of the androids’ plight. But they would have to bring out the big guns and give a damn good pitch if they wanted to recruit him as their de facto leader.

A3-20 shifted his fedora. “Say… here’s something else I wanted to bring to your attention. I have your memories from the beginning of your life all the way up to the moment you climbed into the cryostasis pod. But despite the fact that your memory chip should be complete, I’m missing a detail that I believe is important.”

The cushions on the lounge chair creaked as Jay straightened in his seat. “Is that so?”

“The day the bombs fell in 2077, you were preparing to go to the Veterans’ Hall for some kind of event or ceremony. Oddly, there is nothing in your memory chip that identifies what it was,” A3-20 declared, now sending him a piercing gaze. “The only way for this information to be missing from the chip is if the original source forgot the memory. But you didn’t forget, did you? You know _exactly_ what I’m talking about.”

Jay stiffened, but said nothing.

“During your time in the Armed Forces, you didn’t serve in Anchorage. Even so, I’ve done some deductive reasoning, and I somehow get the feeling that whatever ceremony was supposed to take place at the Veterans’ Hall that night, you were the guest of honor. How were you able to omit this detail from the memory extraction process? And why?” A3-20 inquired. “Your comrades in the Armed Forces saw you as a hero, didn’t they? What did you do to earn that distinction?”

A muscle twitched in Jay’s forehead. “The Army gave out honors and medals to people all the time. It was a way to keep motivation up. We didn’t have to do much to get an award.”

“No. There was something. You did something instrumental for the victory in Anchorage, even if you weren’t actually there,” A3-20 insisted, prodding, searching. “I’m close, aren’t I? What are you hiding?”

Jay pressed his lips together. Hiding? Not quite an accurate term, but close enough. Very few people outside his battalion knew. Even Harkness never learned the truth. The event in the Veterans’ Hall would have revealed it to the entire Armed Forces. On some morbid level, he was glad it never had the chance to get out. Imagine, a lowly Army sergeant receiving such distinguished recognition. He never wanted the accolades. And he certainly didn’t owe the story to A3-20.

“All you need to know,” Jay stated slowly, “is that my place in the Veterans’ Hall that night was undeserved.”

“Underserved? Or unwanted?” A3-20 countered, causing Jay to wince. “I think I’m starting to get the picture here. And what I’m getting at is this: you may reject the notion of heroism from this point on, but you can’t deny that it was part of your past, and even now it still influences your choices and actions.” He gestured toward the exit. “So if you wish, you can turn us down and leave. But don’t be surprised when you find yourself back here, taking the helm and doing what you do best.”

Jay frowned. “Which is?”

“Leading. And winning.” A3-20 shot him a confident grin. “You have your own set of cards to bring to the table. It’s up to you to decide when to play your hand.”

Jay leaned back against the cushions and blew out an exhausted breath. _I don’t need this,_ he told himself, wishing the android had made it easy for him to walk away. _This is a complicated, taxing road. If I have to live in this post-apocalyptic world, I should lay low, spend my remaining years as a nobody. I’ve seen enough war to last me two lifetimes. I should just leave. I—_

_“See you on the other side.”_

Harkness’s voice drifted to the forefront of his thoughts, carrying his last words, the ones he and Jay always said to each other in parting. The desolate feeling hit him three times as hard. If Harkness had been here instead, what would he have done? Knowing his friend, he would have jumped at the opportunity for glory and recognition. The man had many talents, but as Jay unfortunately—and unintentionally—overshadowed him in every aspect of their careers, the Army had never given Harkness the chance to demonstrate them.

And Nora—if she had been the one to survive, would she have left the androids to their own devices? No. She possessed a heart of gold and a brain of scientific brilliance. The thought of abandoning A3-20 would never have crossed her mind.

And Shaun…

Jay lowered his head and shut his eyes. _Shaun turned out to be twice the man I ever was._

His resolve crumbled in the wake of these realizations. Maybe he didn’t owe anything to A3-20.

But he owed everything to the people who would have done better in his place.

Glancing at Shaun’s picture again, he asked, “So if I do this, what? You need me to give you a few pointers?”

“We need you to build an army.”

Jay’s eyes snapped to the other man. “That’s a serious request.”

“That’s not the only thing. We need you to _lead_ that army. And we need you to march it against the Institute.”

Jay blinked as he processed the words. “What makes you think we stand a chance against an enemy of that magnitude if I’m the one leading the charge?”

“Because you’ve done it before,” A3-20 replied matter-of-factly, lips curling into a smug smile. “Maybe not in Anchorage, but… one didn’t necessarily have to be at the battle site to know how to win the war.”

Jay went very still as the android hit the nail on the head with that inference. He stared down his synthetic double, seeing the lightning-fast computations there, the mechanical intelligence that sought to bring out the hidden truth. A3-20 had figured it out. But he couldn’t have fully understood the complexity of Jay’s feelings on it.

Images of a cushy command center entered his working memory. Only senior officers—colonels and generals—surrounded him. He wanted nothing more than to be on the frontlines with his fellow enlisted comrades—with Harkness—but the chain of command had ordered him here, told him this was his place. He remembered the strategies, all drafted by his hand, sent out for the infantry and air support to execute. He had made some mistakes; those mistakes cost lives. In the end, however, he had guaranteed their victory.

His superiors celebrated him for his work as a soldier. The secret guilt never ceased at the lie of that title. As far as he was concerned, he had lost all rights to call himself a soldier the minute he’d stepped into the Pentagon instead of the Anchorage vertibird.

He had won them the war from the safety of D.C.

Suddenly, it dawned on him—his purpose here in this new world. Maybe something besides dumb luck had brought him to this time. Opportunity, redemption… 

The offer of a chance to reclaim his rank and integrity.

_Bring down the sky? Yeah, I can do that._

His demeanor altered, reverted to the hard-hitting persona of Sergeant Jason Kramer.

“Congratulations. You just got yourself the leading NCO tactician of the Sino-American War. Cryogenically defrosted and in the flesh.”

x-x-x-x-x

Jay looked out over his old neighborhood of Sanctuary Hills, now a settlement under his name, watching the residents trading with the caravans and going about their work. In the months since his first steps into the Wasteland, a multitude of experiences had peppered his new life. While he had never set aside the past, he had adjusted well enough to this role. His primary duties required most of his concentration on a daily basis, but his long-term goals persisted in the back of his mind.

One way or another, he would learn of Nora’s fate.

“Mr. Kramer,” Codsworth’s robotic voice called from behind him.

Jay rotated to find his old Mister Handy unit drifting toward him from their shoddily renovated house. He suppressed a grin at the thought of their reunion several weeks back. The poor household robot had, like him, beaten the odds and survived to this point. And if anyone ever needed to know the meaning of unwavering loyalty (and staunch dedication), Codsworth personified the definition.

“Sir, before he headed downtown with your canine companion, your synthetic twin told me to tell you that we should expect a caravan of special visitors within the hour,” Codsworth informed him, coming to a stop as the fading sunlight glinted off his tarnished exterior.

“What kind of special visitors?” Jay questioned, wondering why A3-20 hadn’t told him this directly.

“Travelers from the Capital Wasteland. You know of the active water purifier down there, yes? How it has cleansed almost all of their drinking sources for the past decade or so? Well, the individual responsible for its success is visiting the Commonwealth and distributing cases of Aqua Pura to the settlements. We are next on the list, it seems.”

Jay’s eyebrows rose. “Well, that’s certainly kind of them.”

“Ah, yes, and Mr. A3-20 also wanted me to relay the message that you should greet our guest with utmost decorum. The Lone Wanderer is a highly celebrated hero, you know.”

“So what does that make me?”

“With all due respect, Mr. Kramer, the people who knew _you_ as a hero are all dead.”

Jay snorted, the twinge of pain no longer so sharp at mentions of the past. “I’ll give you that one. The Sole Survivor’s just gonna have to step up his game.”

They parted to attend to their tasks for the day. Jay recalled every tidbit of information he knew about the Lone Wanderer of the Capital Wasteland. A Vault denizen, just like him, only born in a much more recent time. Vault 101, if memory served him right. Sources—mainly his journalist friend Piper Wright—painted her as a very young woman during her rise to fame. From what he had heard of her achievements, she had spent the past ten years proving herself across the east coast as a modern day warrior.

 _Her reputation precedes her,_ he thought as he organized the building components in his workshop. _She must be one hell of a gal to accomplish everything she has after emerging from a Vault. There may be hope for me yet._

Sure enough, a half hour later, a brahmin caravan appeared at the outskirts of Sanctuary Hills.

“Expecting some visitors?” Preston Garvey, his right hand man, inquired as they both squinted at the newcomers in the distance.

“Sure am. Take a rest from that water pump. We’ve got some imports coming in all the way from the Capital today,” Jay told him, setting down his tools and striding from the workshop.

He approached the group hovering at the edge of the settlement, taking in their unfamiliar clothing and equipment. A dozen people stood next to three loaded brahmin, and Jay zeroed in on the woman wearing a suit of power armor, recognizing the commanding posture of a leader. She stood with her back to him, her long brown hair fluttering free as she held her helmet under her arm and addressed her companions. He took a few seconds to examine her armor, identifying it as a different model from the one hanging in his garage.

Jay made his presence known as his boots trod over the dusty road. He kept his sight on the Lone Wanderer, ready to see for himself the face of the Capital’s longtime idol. But once she rotated to send him a pleasant smile, they both froze at the same time.

" _Nora_?" he yelped.

" _Dad_?" she gasped simultaneously.

They paused as they scrutinized each other, the shock emanating from their expressions. She appeared to be the spitting image of his wife, right down to the shape of her jawline and nose. Full lips formed an _O_ of surprise as she gawked at him. She stood at Nora’s exact height and shared her body proportions. Even G5-36 wasn't this precise of a replica.

Her eyes, however, were the same shade of blue as his.

And did she just call him "Dad"?

"Hello," he coughed out, still reeling from her physical resemblance to his wife. "I'm Jay Kramer."

"I'm Sierra Kramer," she replied in a voice not quite like Nora's, for which he was almost thankful. She shook his outstretched hand, still gazing at him in wonder. "We seriously have the same surname?"

"That's some coincidence. You'll have to forgive my staring, but you look just like my late wife," he told her.

"Well, this is going to sound totally crazy, buddy, but you look just like my late father."

Jay's mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out as he tried to register that. Some sort of connection formed between them as her companions peered at him in confusion. Same last name, uncanny resemblances to family members, it couldn't be…

"Would you happen to have roots here in the Commonwealth?" Jay asked her, pulse racing.

"Well, I can trace my lineage all the way to some egghead who was from here," she replied.

"Do you know that egghead's name?"

"Yeah. Shaun Kramer. He was my great-great-great-and-then-some-grandfather. Heard he was smart as hell, a gene that was passed down all the way to my dad."

Jay pressed a palm over his forehead, laughing in both amazement and elation as it all clicked into place. "Oh, God. No wonder. Shaun was my son."

Sierra squinted up at him as if trying to determine the status of his sanity. “Come again? You look way too young to be my great-great-great-great-et cetera-grandfather. Plus, the fact that you’re supposedly over two hundred years old, still alive, and not even a ghoul makes that story kind of unlikely.”

He only beamed at her, feeling a rush of fatherly instincts as the first tangible sign of his familial line stood before him. “Trust me, as ridiculous as it sounds, it’s completely true.” Glancing past her, he declared, “You’re all welcome here in Sanctuary Hills. Feel free to explore and get to know the locals. But Sierra, if you’ve got a few minutes, have I got a story for you.”

“Sure, I’m definitely willing to hear this,” she said, giving him a cheery smile as her group moved past them with the brahmin. “You know, here’s something else that’s interesting. The security chief at Rivet City in the Capital is an android, so he’s got two sets of memories. But before I restored his original ones, he started calling me ‘Nora’ from the moment he first laid eyes on me. I couldn’t understand it until he told me I looked just like his ex-wife.”

Jay gaped at her, incredulous. _No way…_ “Hold on, what’s his name?”

“Well, his android name is A3-21, but he goes by Harkness.”

Another round of laughter issued from Jay’s throat, and he shook his head at how everything had come full circle. “I can’t even believe this. The story just got ten times better. Wait until you learn who Harkness really was…”

As he placed a friendly hand on Sierra’s shoulder to guide her forward, they walked together on the paradoxical line, progenitor and descendant sharing one interval in the placement of time.


End file.
